Bike-sharing not leading to car-lite society

PHOTO: ST FILE

Has bicycle-sharing helped achieve the objective of moving towards a car-lite Singapore?

I have my doubts. From my observation, it is schoolchildren and adults - they used to walk to their destinations - who are using the shared bikes. Many then park these bikes indiscriminately along pathways.

What I am trying to get at is that no car owner seems to have switched to using shared bicycles.

In reality, the number of cars and motorcycles out there is not going to go down through bicycle sharing.

Let us be practical. I have seen car owners park their cars and ride these bicycles to their places of work. They then leave the bikes at locations convenient to them because they want to use the same vehicles to return to their carpark.

Town councils place stickers on regular bicycles that are not parked in allotted places, with the notice that the bikes will be removed.

Apparently, this is not being done for bicycles under the sharing schemes, simply because there are too many of such bicycles "littering" the country.

I urge the authorities to stop the proliferation of shared bikes.

The indiscriminately parked bikes are not only an eyesore but have also been inconveniencing pedestrians who share the same footpaths with the hordes of cyclists.

Gilbert Pereira

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